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by EssayOfThoughts



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AOU spoilers, Aftermath of the Battle in Sokovia, Codependency, Fix-it fic, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-05-22
Packaged: 2018-03-31 16:49:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3985555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She lost her brother in that battle, and she lost so much more. He had been there since they were infants, since they were born. They were twins. They had survived together, changed together, but they had not died together. She had felt as his mind died, as he was torn from her, and she lost not just her brother, but her anchor. Not just her brother, but his company. Not just her brother, but his mind, his memory, his personality. </p><p>She felt so painfully adrift.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

Wanda sat alone. They’d settled in Stark’s tower, for now, though Stark said he had plans to build a new facility, a new place for the Avengers to train, a place apart from any public appearances. Wanda liked that. She didn’t think she was up for any public appearances yet.

 

* * *

 

_She remembered tearing the heart from Ultron, as he had torn the heart from her._

_“Do you know how it felt?”_

 

* * *

 

She had seen his body. Hawkeye had led her to him after the carriers had landed, and despite Vision’s presence still there, still ready to support her, she had collapsed, sobbed, let out all her grief and still it came, like a tidal wave, but over and over and over. Her brother. Her lightning fast brother, who ran as smoothly as quicksilver, who had always been there, always listened, always comforted, always survived through everything…

He was dead.

The tears had not stopped for hours, and even then it was only with sleep. It had been fitful, the sleep, been painful, but, thankfully, no nightmares had come, no memories. In some ways it was almost worse, to be without Pietro’s memories of the day, mingled with hers. Then she reminded herself of Pietro’s death, and knew she could not endure that again, even as a dream.

In that instant, as he died, the pain had been agonising. Now, the grief was unbearable.

 

* * *

 

_She didn’t tell them that in some moments she wanted nothing more than to lie down beside him and die too. That she wished that she had died with him. Her brother, her twin, half her mind and life and memories ripped from her._

_How could she not long for death, if it could bring her closer to him?_

 

* * *

 

She had screamed when the medics came to take him down to the morgue in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s basement. The Widow had tried to hold her back, to comfort her, but Wanda only calmed at Vision’s stabilising touch, and only let them take her brother after she had oaths from them all that nothing would be done to his body. _No more experiments_ , she had said. Not for her brother.

Not now.

Now she curled, alone in a room in the tower, far from all the others. Balled small, legs tucked to chest, wet cheeks pressed to knees, wishing, _wishing_ , her brother was there to hold her.

**_If wishes were fishes…_ **

The grief came again like a tidal wave, and she felt as though she were drowning.

 

* * *

 

_She remembered the experiments with her brother. She remembered as they first learned their gifts, remembered feeling the shape of her brother’s mind, and latching on for comfort and stability, as they had always had with each other. His mind had welcomed it, adapted to it, incorporated her touch so fully she could feel anything he felt, see anything he saw, if she but wished it, and he could do so too._

_He would send her memories when he wished it, and thoughts, send her comfort when she hated training, and advice when she was asked to do something she had only ever seen Pietro do before. He had been ever-present in her life, from birth, and she had assumed it would stay the same to death._

_She remembered wishing for his aid in the instant before Hawkeye had pressed the taser arrow to her forehead, and how he had come without question. She remembered his wishing for her company in training, and how she had undone locks, and hypnotised guards to curl with him. He wished, she wished, they wished. Their wishes had brought them closer._

_Now all her wishing could bring her nothing._

 

* * *

 

“Miss Maximoff?”

The android’s voice was gentle, as ever, and she felt the shape of his mind in the doorway. She could not bring herself to say anything, but at the next hitch in her breath, the next sobbing jolt of her shoulders she heard him take careful steps forward.

“I cannot… I cannot say I understand what you are going through. I have never had someone so dear to me yet, nor lost them. But if you should need someone, through this time, you can come to me. I saw the bond you and your brother shared, and saw it sheared apart when he die—”

For all Wanda knew Vision could have been about to say something else, but she didn’t care. She crawled to the edge of the sofa she sat on, and her arms latched around the android’s waist, her face pressed to his belly as she sobbed again.

_He knew._

 

* * *

 

It took time for her to work down from sobs, and gasps and tears, and Vision moved to sit beside her on the sofa. She ended up crawling into his lap, curled in a way she had only ever curled with Pietro before, her face pressed into the android’s neck, her arms close between her chest and his. His arms looped around her, one hand in her hair, one hand on her back, and he rocked her gently, back and forth slightly, just as Pietro had done.

Almost instinctively, her mind leapt for his.

 

* * *

 

_She had never gone this far inside an alien mind before. Never tried to dig so deeply into another consciousness. Even in training, when they had had her extract information from people, or tear their minds apart, she had done it from a distance, sent her powers in to do as she bid, and held herself back._

_Now she did not, could not. Pietro had anchored her, in a way no one else could. When she realised what her powers could let her do she almost went mad, until Pietro had cradled her to him, and reminded her she was but human. Now Vision did the same, and now, as then, she dug her scarlet fingers into his mind, and made an anchor._

_The bridge was sloppy; made quickly more than artistically, she heard Vision’s brief “_ Oh” _of surprise as she latched in. Then she felt his mind spread, and dance through the bridge woven of thought, and light it up._

_It didn’t feel like home. Only Pietro’s mind and hers could ever be that to her. But it felt like safety, and that was what she needed._

 

* * *

 

It was a long time before either of them spoke again. She felt the movement of Vision’s larynx and she leapt to speak before him.

“I’m sorry.”

Vision’s hand smoothed down her spine.

“It’s alright. I’m glad to help you.”

He _was_. She could feel it, golden as the stone on his brow, a bright rich warmth, purely from having been able to help. His offer to be there had been made just as he was – innocent, genuine, honest and true – and that she had been able to anchor herself to him and that that had helped ease her pain made him glad. It was similar to the joy of a bird that had fought off a hawk, or a dog who had found their human, or her brother when he had stopped a threat.

It was _real_.

She looped her arms around his neck, and found herself sobbing again.

His hands were gentle on her back, and his mind gentle to hers, as he waited for her to regain herself.

 

* * *

 

It was a while longer they waited. Vision waited for her sobs to subside, and she waited for him to fully adjust to the presence of another mind, constantly beyond the brink of his.

It did not take as long as either of them had thought.

It was startling for Wanda, to hear Vision call her by her name, rather than an honorific, but he was tied to her mind now, and formality was nothing to such a bridge.

“Wanda?”

She felt her lips twitch to half a smile, “Yes, Vision?”

She could feel his mind, just beyond hers. She did not dig into it, delve into it, she did not need to. She felt that he was tentative, and uncertain, and let him be.

“There are memories, in your mind, that are not… they do not fit.”

Wanda’s head bowed into Vision’s neck again. “Pietro’s,” she breathed. “We’ve shared a mind since we got our gifts. We shared memories too.”

“Are you sure? There are more than just from then, I think.”

It is in an odd sensation she feels, as Vision gently reaches through their bridge to her mind, and tugs up a memory wholly Pietro’s. Them as children, in a foster home, as Pietro had watched her from across a yard. It was a memory so old she wondered that either of them still had it…

 

* * *

 

Vision’s mind smiled as the thought clicked.

“He is still here. He is in my mind, Vision, he is in my **_mind_**.”

The sheer degree of awe in her voice is undeniable, and she finally uncurls, and looks him in the face. Vision can, at last, _feel_ the thoughts moving in her mind, rather than just seeing their outline, and cannot help but smile as her face lights up, as the realisation starts singing through her mind like floodlights, as she prepares to search through all her mind. He reaches delicately across the bridge and offers a single helping hand.

Wanda grasps it like a lifeline.

 

* * *

 

_Wanda knows her mind. Scarlet and black, gold and deep brown, they are all her colours, so rich and dark that she recognises them instinctively. Vision is a new addition, but his colours are like hers, golden and burgundy-red, with a hint of silvered green, distinct enough to stand out, but not so different as to confuse. Pietro has always been silver and blue, and that is what her floodlights illuminate, shining like the stars._

_They are fractured, in the upper levels of her mind. Fragmented and torn, memories which are mere moments, or which are missing parts, as though they corrupted in the transfer. Wanda cradles these like baby birds, and sets them to one side._

_Vision points out a distant cluster, glowing faintly like the Pleiades, and she nods him forward to collect them. She trusts him here, as she has only trusted Pietro before, and his touch holds them as delicate as eggshell, as he sets them with those she has found._

_Together, they delve deeper._

 

* * *

 

Her mind is, Vision realises, huge. He has known it said that all humans have internal lives beyond imagining, but to see it in action…

It takes his breath away.

Her mind is like a cathedral to him. It is huge and hauntingly gorgeous, painted in gold and deep brown, and scarlet, scarlet, _scarlet_ , over a deep dark black. Her mind stretches above him beyond imagining, and deeper than he thought he could comprehend. It glows with memories, layered like a congregation, thoughts like a host of angels, ideas like a choir, and her focus shines down on them all like the light of God.

It scares Vision slightly, to know she is all this, and still human.

 

* * *

 

_Wanda scans the surface of her thoughts, and several layers beneath. She knows these parts of herself well, by now, and knows she and Vision have cleared it of all her brother’s memories. Where she has set them apart from her thoughts they are singing into shape, and her mind leaves silence in their space like a shrine. The memories shine like silver candles, and it is with them in mind that she dives deeper._

 

* * *

 

Vision follows her, as she goes deeper into her mind. They are beneath the congregation, the choir and the host of angels now, but her focus still shines down, as they delve into the parts of herself she tucks away. There are more silvered thoughts here, sprinting through and setting delicate scarlet thoughts spinning and dancing like mobiles. Vision catches sight of rubble, and a girl curled in her brother’s arms, and decides to follow where Wanda leads.

It is darker here, he notices, and her brother’s memories shine brighter than ever.

 

* * *

 

_Each memory Wanda touches reverberates with her now. These are not the memories of childhood that she never felt made, these are older, and ones they shared when her mind first linked to his. These are memories she knows are his, and where the first might have taken her an age to find on her own, these she would have found in mere moments after the first was noticed._

_They feel like a trail of breadcrumbs to Wanda, and she follows them into the woods._

 

* * *

 

Wanda seems more certain now, to Vision, as she goes through her mind. She is not searching diligently through every nook and cranny, every tomb and catacomb and crypt. Instead she is searching through certain ones, and dancing from door to door, as though to wake the dead.

Everywhere she looks, there comes a part of Pietro, and when Vision looks into a catacomb of memory she passed by, he finds it as dark as pitch.

 

* * *

 

_Wanda knows they are almost at the foundations now. They have found the memories of her brother, and his ideas, and thoughts. They have found his commentary and his emotions, all silvered and greyed like his hair, one or two with touches of his bright living blue, and they dance in their shrine which glows like a moon above them. But they have not yet found **him** , and Wanda cracks through the floor to the foundation so full of hope she feels as though she might burn if it is not met._

 

* * *

 

He is there. His mind is small, and almost sleeping. There is no blue that is not buried, and his quicksilver form is buried beneath a heavy fear that shows as glowing white crackling like lightning around his form. Vision barely hears Wanda’s call to her brother, but he hears it nonetheless.

 

* * *

 

_Pietro? Pietro, can you hear me?_

 

* * *

 

Vision can feel her crushing sorrow when the mind does not react, and he can feel as she pushes beyond it and tries again. She settles into her consciousness here, making a space for herself in her foundations, and she calls again.

 

* * *

 

_Pietro? Please, brother, please come out._

 

* * *

 

Vision watches her dance around the mind. The movements are too close and intimate for him to dare intrude, and he notices when she almost steps to him, but holds back. This is between the twins, and he moves to withdraw from her mind.

 

* * *

 

_Wanda settles into place more firmly, and stretches out the most delicate of touches. She can feel the solid skein of fear that circles her brother’s mind, and the deeper vein of pain, but her fingers brush them aside just as they had when they had been training. They are, at this point, only mental, and Wanda knows her brother’s mind better even than her own._

 

* * *

 

_Pietro? Pietro, can you hear me?_

 

* * *

 

_She sees the least flicker of blue from the mind, and smiles. She hums half a lullaby, lets her fingers dance and scarlet twist around them in desperately delicate curlicues. She decides then, that she will tease her brother awake, or she will die trying._

 

* * *

 

Vision is pulled back, before he leaves, as he sees Wanda shining crimson and scarlet, blood red and burgundy, from the depths of her mind. He knows now why she grieved so deeply, and why she sought her brother so single-mindedly. A bond like the one they now shared was not one easily shed, and not one made without reason. He knows she will die, before she gives her brother up.

It is not _quite_ a sigh that he gives, as he delves back down, and settles at her side.

 

* * *

 

Beyond them both, in the tower, the others wonder at the quietness. Steve, Natasha and Clint start to search, Thor sends Mjolnir a-looking, and Tony digs deeper into code, to see if he can resurrect J.A.R.V.I.S. a second time.

They have lost two members, one to death and one to God-knows-what, and they do not wish to lose two more.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you know I wrote another [AOU fix-it-fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3956923/chapters/8872666) a few days ago. 
> 
> ...
> 
> Yeah, I wrote another. Sorry. My brain refused to shut up.
> 
> Hey, at least this time you get all the chapters at once!
> 
> Comments and feedback are much appreciated!


	2. Chapter 2

 

It was Thor who found them. Tagging along behind the hammer he had sent to search them out like a bloodhound, he padded quietly into the room, for all his size, and his voice was quiet, when Vision turned to see him.

“How is she doing?” his nod to Wanda is cursory, but his careful concern is there. He knows, after all, what it is like to lose a brother, if not to the same painful degree. The way Wanda is curled into the android suggests she has needed the comfort of another person’s presence, and they had been remiss to let her bear her grief alone.

Vision blinks. Tiny lenses in his eyes set and reset rapidly, and he focusses on the Odinson’s face. His mind is split, at present. Half still a lifeline in Wanda’s mind, and half within his own, in case of company. One magenta hand strokes down Wanda’s hair, and he speaks.

“Better. She is not all healed, not yet. But we have found something that may help.”

Thor’s brow rises in curiosity, and he settles on the sofa at a distance from the pair. Under his weight, and Vision and Wanda’s, it creaks slightly. “May I know what it is?”

Vision does not nod, not when it would jostle Wanda, but dips his head. “Her mind was linked to her brother’s. When his body died his mind leapt for hers for safety. His memories were scattered throughout her mind. We have been searching them out.”

“But they’ll have no body to go to.” Thor’s question is quiet, and more a conclusion than a query.

Vision’s face is a picture. “Ah. We had not thought that far ahead.”

Thor chuckles, but quietly, and Wanda is not disturbed. Vision is starting to think the room could fill with a hurricane and Wanda would stay, immovable and implacable in the midst of it, until she had teased her brother’s mind awake. He does not focus on how his hands smooth over her hair, nor down her spine, just lets some curious trace of humanity in his physical form know that she needs this comfort and know what to do. He wonders vaguely if this knowledge comes from Wanda’s own mind, down the bridge that now lies betwixt them, and decides it does not matter. From the glowing silver-blue shrine in Wanda’s mind comes a bubble of liquid laughter, and Vision gets the sense this is something Pietro wondered and did many times himself.

 

* * *

 

_In the depths of her mind, Wanda looks up. She felt the bubble of laughter form and decides that, delicate or not, she must move this mind to its memories, if she is to have a hope of waking it. She finds the last fraying remnants of her bond to her brother, and makes the threads anew. The net they form is delicate, but strong, and she carries her brother upwards, like a soul to Heaven._

 

* * *

 

Thor is gentle, when next he speaks.

“We were all worried, when we realised you both had vanished. We have already lost her brother, and Banner. None of us are of a mind to lose another comrade.”

Vision is quiet. He can explain why he vanished to help Wanda, he knows. He can try to explain the loss Wanda experienced with her brother’s death. Instead, he settles for, “Do we still have my Cradle?”

Thor blinks, but nods. “It is still in Stark’s lab. Why do you ask?”

“Her brother’s body. The Cradle can heal, and you woke me from –”

Thor nods, understanding. “I will talk to the Hawkeyed one.”

With that he leaves, and Vision sinks back into his mind, and from there, across the bridge to Wanda’s. He watches as she lifts her brother’s mind to his memory, and completes the shrine.

 

* * *

 

_To lift a mind was not easy. Not when it was from the foundations and must be taken to the eaves. She lifted with all her mind, and knew she must. The mind was **her** domain, her place, her knowledge, and this place was **hers**. No mind could defy her here, least of all her brother’s. _

_In the physical world she quaked where Vision held her, the mental strain made physical, but still she lifted, and carried her brother to his memories._

_He had carried her before, she remembered. Carried her when they had been taken from the rubble of their home, carried her when she exhausted herself in training, carried her to fights and from them. Now it was her turn, and she refused to fail him._

_(Her scarlet heartblood was stronger than his ever-quick silver, and she knew it.)_

 

* * *

 

Vision watched as Wanda lifted her brother. He could feel the effects the strain had on her, but knew his hands would be clumsy here, and do more harm than good. This was for the twins, and of them, and he was not close enough to aid. He fed what strength he could to Wanda, through their bridge, and watched as, finally, her brother’s mind completed the dancing moon of light.

The shrine _shone_.

 

* * *

 

_Pietro? Pietro can you hear me?_

 

* * *

 

The mind is resting still, and both of them can see that. The skein of lightning and the lake of mercury are shed, and dissipate in the face of Wanda’s scarlet, and the blue shines through, veined with silver and grey, but blue and _living_. It pulses with life and memory, and Vision feels Wanda relax.

 

* * *

 

 _He is waking._ Wanda’s mind is quiet, but carries a depth of gratitude and thankfulness Vision did not know could exist.

 _What do we do now?_ Vision passes her his memories of talking with the thunder god, and it feels as though her mind nods.

_Good. When they bring him we will wake him. Will you help me pass his mind to his body?_

The question shocks Vision. To him it is simple. Of _course_ he would help, in any way he could. He has already offered his aid, he reminds her, and knowing now the pain she went through with her twin’s loss he would do much to ensure she did not suffer so again.

Wanda’s mind smiles round them, scarlet bright, black deep and glossy, the brown like antiqued wood, and the gold like gilding. It is bright, and it is beautiful. It is a shining happiness so pure that, feeling her mind new-latched to his, he would not have thought it possible.

The blue of her brother’s mind is bright, within hers now, nestled like a duck egg among her brown and scarlet. At last, Vision could say he understood.

 

* * *

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

It is less time than they thought, before the body is brought to the lab. Wanda, skimming through their minds, notes that Hawkeye did not exactly _agree_ with the idea, when Thor had explained it to him, but had gone along with it anyway. He had claimed they wished to let Pietro’s body be healed in the Cradle, so he was presentable for his funeral, and S.H.I.E.L.D. had accepted his word.

The Cradle itself is still damaged. From waking Vision, and from the lightning strike, some of the circuits are shot, and Vision borrows tools from Stark to repair what he knows he can understand. Halfway through, Stark, still stumped on resurrecting J.A.R.V.I.S. a second time, grumbles and starts helping, and by the time Pietro’s body has arrived the Cradle is nearly complete.

Vision works with Stark to finish the last of the complex circuits that make it, as Wanda settles her brother’s body down. There are tears in her eyes, he notes, but she is smiling. When he sends a tentative question to her, asking if she is alright, the hope she shows him glows so bright it almost blinds him.

 

* * *

 

Thor tries to explain it to them, what they must do, but they do not all understand. In the gap Vision taps the tablet awake, and sets the machine whirring Pietro’s body to almost-life. It will take more energy than they have at that moment to wake Pietro fully, and Vision can feel Wanda’s nervousness as she starts plaiting together her brother’s memories into ropes.

Pietro’s mind, she tells him, is like vines, and every motion leaping between them like monkeys, or like the neurons of his brain. It sings like hummingbird wings, she says, and it matched the song of her mind. His tree was a forest, roots and vines and nature like the brain they claimed as home. The mind, she says fondly, scarlet fingers running over the plaits she makes in her own, is only her domain because she could watch the dance of Pietro’s.

In that moment Vision does not doubt her.

 

* * *

 

_The ropes are finished rapidly, those that use memories. These Wanda sets to dancing like lianas, as soon as Pietro’s brain is alive enough. Where her brain lets her mind take the form of a cavernous structure – she never searched it out fully – Pietro’s stretches and grows like a tree, an Yggdrasil reaching for some Heaven so far beyond reach he could grow infinities in its bark. The lianas she sets dangling stretch from space to the void, from branches to roots, both invisible to her. She tries, as much as she can, to recall the layout of her brother’s mind, and finds the lianas stretching home when she misplaces them by a neuron, welcoming the familiar space._

_She is not perfect in her skill, not yet, but she lets his biting commentary make a vine, and his sarcasm its thorns, and smiles as it winds around the core of all things. She can climb those thorns, she knows, when the time comes to set her brother into the nest of the tree, but she still has work to do._

_Each hummingbird of thought, and each monkey of ideas, must be crafted carefully. Some parts are torn, or only half, and Wanda frowns and compares them to her own. Where she can fill them she offers her account to Pietro’s moon, and the piece completes itself in glowing silver filigree, filled in with a blue like glass. The hummingbirds are brighter than ever, she thinks, and sets them free and singing._

_In her own mind her choir finds its harmony again, and a painful tenseness in her brow fades to nothing._

_The monkeys are harder. Ideas are ones they only shared when need be, were what set them apart, and kept them siblings rather than one mind as well as one soul. Where they are missing she can do nothing but hope that once home they will fill in the gaps. She shapes the monkeys delicately, all speed and quicksilver mischief, and she smiles as the form of one takes her finger before taking freedom._

_She has made the bridge anew, to her brother’s mind, and it is an odd feeling of stretching, to reach between two minds not her own. She does not mind it. Vision’s mind is a comfort, is safety, and her brother’s mind is like home. Vision is help, and aid, and possibly, one day, a friend, but her brother has always been there, when homes and families were not._

_Her brother is home. Vision is a helpmeet._

 

* * *

 

Vision feels the stillness when Wanda has done all she can. All that remains in her mind is her brother’s blue-silver sphere, still shining like the moon. He feels her uncertainty, and reaches out.

_What do you need?_

Her mind startles at his voice, and turns, almost, from watching her brother’s mind, to watching his.

 _You are uncertain_ , he asserts. He can see it in her mind, the shaken waves that pass through her scarlet. _What can I do to help?_

Wanda’s mind watches her brother’s again, but stretches toward Vision’s.

_I’ve never held two minds with my own before. Not with both awake and aware. He’ll need to be awake, to make the transfer. If he’s not…_

The movement of her mind is like a shaken head and Vision’s understands the gulf of knowledge they stand before. There is no record of this being done before, and Wanda’s fear is great and valid.

_I will stabilise you, if I can._

Vision’s promise is certain, and quiet, and reminds Wanda too much of Pietro’s promise to find after the battle. Vision’s mind seems to smile.

_Has he not, in a way? He found your mind, when he died, when his battle was done. And soon we will wake him._

 

* * *

 

In the physical, Wanda relaxes, losing all tension she held _._ Her gaze meets Vision’s and she nods. Between them their bridge, gold and green from his end, and gold and scarlet from hers, is strengthened, as he reaches through, to offer all the strength he can pull from the stone on his brow. It is supposed to be of the mind, he knows, and it has killed many people from those fighting for it, or in its name.

 _And now,_ he decides, _it will bring one such person back_.

 

* * *

 

Vision reaches for Thor’s arm as Wanda lifts her brother’s mind in her arms and steps out of her brain.

 

* * *

 

_She falls though the bridge to her brother’s mind. The shell of memories and ideas she made there are much like his mind ever was, and have fed blue and silver into their bridge. The descent feels less like falling, and more like returning home. Vision takes this moment to tell her his perception of her mind and she smiles thinly._

_She will be the Morningstar, if she must, and she will Fall to save her brother._

_The impact as she hits the tree of her brother’s mind is agony, but she knows she must do this. She pushes on._

 

* * *

 

Thor clasps Vision’s hand when the android sways, but the android’s free had waves away worry. Wanda stands close to the cradle, fingers dancing in scarlet tendrilled patterns over it, and for all she is shaking, she stands tall. Vision’s eyes are fixed on the back of her skull and the stone on his brow is shining, yellow-gold and a touch of his own green and burgundy, fed through from the colour of his flesh. He focusses his mind, rooting deeper than ever and finding more strength than he knew, and passes it all to Wanda.

She has no lifeline in this, falling like an angel, and he is her only connection back to her mind.

 

* * *

 

_The tree is tall. This she has always known. Like her brother is taller than her, so too does his brain stretch further. Where he could move faster, so too he could process more. The space his mind inhabits is immense, but she does not let it daunt her. She finds the vine she set about the tree, and finds the thorns. She shifts the sphere of her brother’s mind onto her back, and she climbs._

_She is an angel, in Vision’s perception, but she has fallen, and does not know if she will return. With all her gifts, and born as human as she was, she wonders if she could be Nephilim, and hears a faint laugh from the burden of her brother on her back._

 

* * *

 

**_You are a witch, my sister. Scarlet as blood, and good as an angel, and through, and through a witch._ **

 

* * *

 

_The voice of her brother gives her a strength that Vision’s mind or even his stone never could, and with that she leaps three loops of the vine, and finds herself within sight of the summit. She knows she must make this, must carry her brother home. For years he has carried her, and shared his strength with her. For years he chose to act as protector._

 

* * *

 

_Now, Pietro, this is mine._

 

* * *

 

Vision feels it, when she reaches the seat of her brother’s mind. It is a chasm in the tree that makes a nest, and where the orb of his moonlike mind must settle for him to wake, and he reaches to wrap a tendril of thought around Wanda, ready to pull her back when he wakes. He feels her joy at having made it, at setting her brother’s mind in its home, and tugs her gently toward her brain, as she feels the first moments of Pietro’s mind awakening.

 

* * *

 

_Vision’s tendril of thought snaps taut, as it starts to pull Wanda home. She sees as her brother’s mind wakes, properly, at last. She feels the brightest blue, and clearest silver snake their way through, feels his grey spark anew down vines like neuron. It is a pale and delicate beauty, and as careful a construct as the nature it mimics._

_She feels as Pietro’s mind sinks from its nest, and through the core of the tree. She feels it make its roots, and as, suddenly, everything is brought into sharp relief, a bright clarity suddenly **there** as Wanda lands at her edge of the bridge to her brother’s mind. _

_She wants to watch, more than **anything** , but she has spent too much time gone from her mind. She sinks into her scarlet home, and feels it wrap around her, warm as blood._

_She knows, like instinct, when her brother wakes entirely, and stretches out alone to greet him._

 

* * *

 

 _His mind has bloomed like a flower_ , she tells Vision. The way she describes it to Vision it sounds as though Pietro’s orb has _become_ a flower, petals blue and silver. The tree, in her description, cradles this flower-orb and its branches stretch out and dangle lianas into a gulf beyond what Vision could ever understand.

 _In short_ , she says to him, _he is ready_.

Vision nods to Thor, and the god begins to spin his hammer. Between their minds he can feel Wanda’s mind sending messages as fast as her brother ever was, to make sure Pietro understands before his body is struck awake.

 

* * *

 

Wanda opens her eyes to see the lab. She steps back from the cradle, from where her fingers had danced a scarlet foxtrot over the lid, and smiles and nods toward Thor, spinning his hammer faster and faster. She can hear the rain hammering down on the tower, thicker and heavier than any natural storm. The lights in the building stand firm, and outside it grows darker and darker, though it is yet noon outside.

It feels like night, and Wanda sends this to Pietro too, so he is ready for waking.

Above them the thunder rumbles, and Wanda steps toward Vision, and reaches out a hand.

Responding to her mind, he reaches too, and their hands clasp tightly. She knows he understands now. He had been alien at first, to them all. Not human, not robot. Not AI, not entirely, he was something else and something new, just as the link Pietro and Wanda had shared was. Wanda half remembers a quote she heard, something new and something blue, and half smiles at the idea of her brother and Vision comingled through their bridges to her mind.

Outside, the thunder rumbles again, and it sounds as though an avalanche is about to take them away.

In the thunder god’s hand, Mjolnir spins only faster, and Wanda can barely see it. When she sends the image to her brother he responds with a burst of playful jealousy.

_You are ready?_

Pietro’s mind laughs and her mind sings back.

**_As I’ll ever be, sister._ **

Vision and Wanda look to Thor together, and nod as one.

 

* * *

 

The lightning is as bright and pure a white as the skein that had looped about Pietro’s mind. Wanda knows, now, that any traces of that have been chased off better even than her scarlet fingers could manage. The reflection of the light off the night-dark clouds and the glass in the lab is silver and blue, and it feels like her brother is running circles round the room, leaving the ghostly trail that training could not ever remove.

The noise it makes, ringing down on the metal of the Cradle is almost deafening, but Wanda narrows her telekinesis to a subatomic width, and thins out the bolts of sound by her eardrums.

She has no wish to be deaf at her brother’s rebirth.

 

* * *

 

The lid of the Cradle is dented deeper this time, and Pietro pushing at it makes it shake. Wanda reaches for her brother’s mind, and finds it whole, Yggdrasil and lianas, monkeys and hummingbirds all, and he delves and dances into her cathedral, as Vision and Thor push the lid of the Cradle back.

Wanda steps forward, almost involuntarily. It is instinct, now, that guides her. Patterns and habits born of only being able to trust Pietro, and she finds his reaching hand and grasps it tight, his warmth covering the coolness left, when Vision move to lift the lid. She tugs him out, tugs him toward her, and Pietro stumbles just a moment.

There is no blood on the hospital gown they clad him in at S.H.I.E.L.D., and there are no new scars on him that she can see. Once he regains his feet he scoops her into a hug, and she hugs him back, their embrace so painfully close she can feel her muscles and bones complain. She does not. It is her brother, back from the dead, and she feels as though she could sing and dance with the sheer and golden joy of it.

Without even thinking she leads Pietro’s mind toward Vision’s and Vision’s toward Pietro’s, showing them each other and allowing for comprehension. The two minds, nod, politely, and then they sink back to the physical.

Wanda is still wrapped in her brother’s arms and has no wish to leave them. She nestles her head against his shoulder, and for all the clinical smell of the gown he’s in, it is, ultimately, still Pietro. She feels the inhale and exhale of his breath against her hair, and feels the shape of his mind, and the bridge between hers and his.

It feels like home.

 

* * *

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> So you know I wrote another [AOU fix-it-fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3956923/chapters/8872666) a few days ago. 
> 
> ...
> 
> Yeah, I wrote another. Sorry. My brain refused to shut up.
> 
> Hey, at least this time you get all the chapters at once!
> 
> Comments and feedback are much appreciated!


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